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36 Walford Road, Uxbridge, UB8 2NG

Reviews

1. Terrible property

By tank - stayed here from 1st July 2012 to 1st February 2013

This landlady is catering exclusively to students, and it seems appealing because the rent is very cheap - but don't be fooled.

At first, the bedroom seemed fine. It was fairly spacious and had one closet built into the wall with plenty of storage space. It was only as the summer progressed into winter that the real problems started. Firstly, there seems to be no insulation in this property at all. Whenever it rained, condensation would be so rife there would be drips running down the windows. It did not matter how much you aired the room out, it would still appear. The room also had a faint smell of mould.

Just before the Christmas break, I discovered that the whole base of my bed was full of black mould. I complained to the landlady and explained to her that I had been feeling ill in that room for months, but had not understood the reason, up until now, and asked her to replace the bed base. She refused, and only agreed when I then told her I would be forced to vacate because of my deteriorating health. Luckily, when I came back, the bed base had indeed been changed.

There was a space in the wall next to my bed that was supposed to be converted into another closet, but the project had been abandoned. It was full of debris and rat poison. At night, I could hear scurrying around, and when I approached my landlady and said there were rats in the walls, she answered by saying "Oh not again. But, not to worry, it's only mice." She did nothing to try to eradicate the problem apart from telling us to clean the kitchen more properly. The year before, a rat had built a nest in one of the kitchen cupboards, and still seemed to lived there, as it once ran over my housemate's foot.

Even after the base had been switched in my room, I still felt ill, and later discovered that the inside of my built in closet was ridden with mould. The landlady didn't think it was a big deal and mocked me to my housemate for bringing this up with her. To her credit, she did offer to use anti mould products on the wood, but it felt futile seeing as the insulation was so poor and the dampness would only cause the mould to come back.

Around this time, I was having family issues and needed to move back to my home country. I explained this to my landlady, who accused me of lying and trying to con her. She said she would release me from my contract if I found someone to take over the room. After a few weeks of looking, I found a woman who was willing to move in 2 days later. When I spoke to my landlady, she said she'd take care of the situation. I later found out that she had denied the woman the room, and instead rented the room out to a bloke she herself had shown around the property two weeks earlier - and then proceeded to charge me £120 from my deposit as an "admin charge" for her "trouble". I would have disputed this charge had I not had to move with very short notice.

This property had mould in at least two other rooms - one of them also had a big damp patch. The people living in those rooms got money off their rent for the inconvenience. I did not receive such a thing because the landlady had determined that I was jumping on my housemates' bandwagon and was making my health issues from the mould up to stiff her out of money. Yeah.

I told this woman to her face, and I'll repeat it here: She does not care about the welfare of her tenants or the fact that this property has a lot of problems (condensation and dampness being #1). The presence of rodents does not phase her even though there are holes and cracks in the floor and wall that these can easily get in through. I would NOT recommend ANYONE to stay in this place unless it goes through major renovations. If I could give it 0 stars I would.